Cuffed & Collared Read Free Page B

this investigation, I would strongly advise against it.”
    Kyle folded his arms across his chest. With a sense of growing purpose, he felt stronger than he had since finding Jazz. “You know, Sergeant, you’ll find I’m much like Jazz was. I don’t take orders very well, and I don’t take shit from anyone.”
    A teasing smile played across her lips. “Neither do I, Mr. Ramsey. Stay out of my case, or you’ll discover just how little shit I do take and what I do to those who try to give it to me.”
    Kyle watched her walk away, down the hall toward the bedroom. His teeth clenched over her high-handed orders, and his hands curled into fists. He was determined to look into Jazz’s death himself, because he was not intimidated in the least by Sergeant Malloy’s threat. But he was something else. He was excited by it and that fact just made him angrier.
    ****
    Less than an hour later, Kyle stormed into his condo, flung his keys on the counter, then stopped dead in his tracks. Overwhelming emotion, grief and anger, froze him to the spot. His body shook with the effort it took to keep himself under control before he realized he didn’t have to anymore. Here in the safety of his private world, he could let go.
    He hated living alone, apart from his daughters, his marriage broken beyond repair. But at that moment, he was glad no one was here to see him break down into the kind of tears he’d learned to suppress in early childhood. He bent at the waist and pressed the heels of his hands against his watery eyes. A sob ripped past his lips, and again, he was grateful to be alone in his misery.
    Losing people he loved through old age, accident, and even illness was always hard. This was different. Murder was a kind of violation he’d never expected to deal with. Wrapping his head around the fact, accepting that Jazz was gone for good because someone chose to rob him of the rest of his life was impossible.
    As Kyle stood, rocking with his grief, he fought to regain some semblance of rational thought. He wouldn’t do Jazz any good falling apart. He told himself all of this, and yet the tears insisted on having their time to spill out and wring him dry.
    Long minutes later, he was finally done. With shaky steps, he headed for the wet bar and poured a couple of fingers of scotch. He downed that quickly and refilled the glass before stumbling to the couch. He slouched bonelessly into the cushions, sipping the second drink even though he wanted to knock it back, too. Hollowed out as he felt from his crying jag, getting shitfaced and being hung-over the next day at work wasn’t going to help his friend.
    Neither would focusing on his residual anger at the cop in charge of the investigation. The woman had been infuriating, believing Jazz had conducted a kinky sex life that had led to his death. How dare she suggest such a thing? The pull of attraction he’d felt in her presence only served to add to his ire. She was flat out wrong in the direction she was heading, and he was an idiot for wanting her on any level.
    With his head pressed against the back of the sofa, he pictured the last time he’d been with Jazz in this very room. They’d tied one on months ago when they had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. The evening had devolved into a bitch session, no other word for it, about their ex-wives, how much divorce sucked, and the difficulty of finding women to date or even just fuck given their heavy workload. Or, at least Kyle had complained about his dry spell. He’d also confessed to his best friend that the stress of the divorce and work was getting to him in a way it hadn’t ever before.
    Jazz had suddenly fished around his pants’ pocket and handed him a business card. “I’ve got just the thing for you, my friend.”
    Kyle had reached for the card and narrowed his eyes to focus on the tiny writing in stark black against a snow white background. There was simply a name, an address, and a phone number. He raised